That’s right folks, its breakup time here in Nome, all the snow is starting to melt away leaving muddy dirty streets and yards. To be honest, its quite an ugly sight right now. Its kind of nice though because you can find stuff you thought you had lost, like pop cans, or small things you thought you put in the trash, but didn’t quite make it.

On the up side of life, if melting snow is the effect, heat is obviously the cause. Its been in the high 30s here all week and after sub-zero temperatures just a few weeks ago, 36 feels pretty nice. I think we’ve reached the end of snowmachining season, but just right around the corner I’ll be able to take the fourwheeler out on the beach and do cool stuff like that. I’m really looking forward to the summer season.

Now, I’ve always known that Nome is a light place during the summer, but it really shocks me each day when I wake up how light it is! We’re already up to almost 17 hours of daylight with a sunrise at 6:40 and sunset of 11:30pm. I wouldn’t have guessed that it would feel this light, this early in the summer…but I haven’t lived here in almost 20 years.

I’ve been working really hard nonstop on the new KICY website, and we’re going to have an official launch date of May 1st. I’d encourage you to go check it out once its up. Its going to be sah-weet, complete with Live Streaming audio, photo album, and other way cool stuff. I’ve got to work tomorrow on getting it from the test server over to the KICY web host… for all I know it could be the toughest part because of all the database stuff that will be going on.

The last day of my one and only class this semester is tomorrow, and then I’ve got to work on my paper…..it will be weird not having homework anymore, weird but nice.

What a week here in one of the coldest parts of the USA. My parents were here last week and left on Thursday. We had a great time seeing Nome and visiting people. It was different than when Lydias parents were here, as they were new to most of Nome and it was a goal to get them a “authentic” nome experience, with my parents we didn’t have to do that because they had gotten their own about 18 years ago!

The KICY staff went out to dinner at Malinos while my parents were here last Monday, another place that was around back in the 80s but had changed a little. I guess you could say that was the theme for their trip. Hmm, other highlights include watching the OLN footage of Iditarod 2005, graciously recorded by the Sommermans. It was fun to hear my audio used in such a major production! We played the “trump” game a few times, had crab on Saturday night….I went for a snowmachine ride with my dad on Wednesday afternoon, and then even pick up mom from the store and she got to ride along as well. It was a very fun time, Lydia and I were really glad they got to come.

This past weekend I went camping with Neil, and Jamie as they led a youth group trip. It was a blast. We snowmachined out of town for about 40 minutes and camped in canvas tents. The tents were setup over the snow, however there was no bottom to the tent. We dug down about 3 feet until we hit tundra to place a wooden stove, while the beds remained up high on the snow. We had a tarp down along with caribou hides for everyone to sleep on. It didn’t get to cold with the very warm sleeping bag, skins and stove going. The next afternoon we took the kids up a mountain and they were able to sled down. We would snowmachine back up, and they would do it all over again. I’m guessing that the sled run was over a mile….it was pretty cool.

I left the camp a little earlier than everyone else and made my way home just in time for a wonderful dinner prepared for Lydia & I by some of the girls from church that were getting a cooking lesson. I don’t think I have been that full in quite a long time, it was an entire four course meal and left me stuffed!

This week is my birthday week, that will be exciting! I’ve got guitar lessons tonight and I’ve been practicing quite a bit lately, hopefully I’m making good progress.

It’s a beautiful Saturday morning, the sun is shining, our house is clean, I’ve got a pretty good week behind me, and my parents arrive in just about two hours. This week was a pretty good, I spent lots of time working on the new KICY website which reminds me of all the computer work that I used to do for 8 hours a day….I’m not sure how something can be fun and lame at the same time, but it is.

I guess we’ll go all the way back to the last post, I apologize for not posting more frequently but I’ve got other things to do…..like stuff. The concert in Brevig went well, about half the village showed up, and it was interesting to me because I had never been in a village this small, in fact the two villages that I had been two are the largest in the area each with about 900 people. We flew out there on the plane owned by the “Christian Pilots Association”. It was a larger plane, but still only held about 6 people at the most. I had about 15 minutes to setup the broadcasting equipment after we got there, but luckily was able to rise to the challenge. We sent the audio back to Nome and on the air and things sounded great. I didn’t really have to many authentic native experiences just because I was there for such a short amount of time, and stayed with 5 other white guys from Nome in construction housing.

Friday night, just when Lydia and I thought we had enough crab a few days before, I went out crabbing with Neil, Jamie, Nate and Michael and we caught 5! Heres the only problem, one of the stations snowmachines was broken, so everyone thought my 4wheeler would work, so I took that. It worked fine, except that because of how fast we were going, and how high the handle bars are, after riding for 30 minutes even with mittens on, my hands started to freeze. Neil was nice enough to trade machines with me part way back and it allowed my paws to warm up and I didn’t have to lose any fingers. We did take the 5 delicious crabs back to our house and everyone had a crab eating extravaganza..it was great.

The Military Ball on Saturday, I got to wear my suit and some people even wore tuxedoes. Lydia was on shift at the radio station on Saturday so about 20 minutes after we got there we had to leave and go turn on a remote broadcast coming in from Fairbanks. Luckily we were just able to turn it on, and head back to the dinner. They had the “Air Force Band of the Pacific” up and they were very talented and fun to listen to.

It should be fun this week with my parents here, I’ll try and keep you updated more regularly as the week goes on, I’m sure this one won’t be nearly as routine as the last few have been.